Ward Hunt

“ The notes were intended to be received by the hundreds of tax collectors throughout the State, a class of men not usually qualified to decide nice legal questions, and not elected with a view to their capacity to make such decisions. Yet the question of whether a bank was a specie-paying bank or a non-specie-paying bank rested in the judgment and decision of the collector. If one collector held as a matter of law that a bank which paid specie on its bills but refused to pay specie on its deposits was a specie-paying bank, he could receive its notes in payment of taxes. ”

“ It is evident, again, that the legislature of South Carolina, when they intended that the bills of non-specie-paying banks should not be received in payment of taxes, used language perfectly adapted to that purpose, and indicated the process by which it would easily, but certainly, be accomplished. ”

“ It was asserted by Stoll, the tax collector, that the sixteenth section of the charter of the bank had been repealed or so far modified by the act passed in 1843-enacting [1] that 'all taxes for the use and service of the State shall be paid in specie, paper medium, or the notes of specie-paying banks of this State'-that thereafter the bills of the bank in question were not receivable for taxes due to the State, unless the bank was in fact at the time the taxes became payable a bank that redeemed its notes in specie ”